Abstract

Where English has two or more alternative complementation patterns for the same verb, their relative frequencies might vary among national varieties. This article investigates the relative frequencies of various complementation patterns among nine verbs whose complementation may differ between British and Indian English: provide, furnish, supply, entrust and present ; pelt, shower, pepper, bombard. A method was devised to use on-line Indian and British newspaper archives as a source of more examples than could be obtained from corpora. The results showed consistent differences between varieties. The construction “NP1-V-NP3-NP2” (he provided them money), though not common, was more likely to occur in Indian than in British newspaper English. The construction “NP1-V-NP3-with-NP2” (he provided them with money) was considerably more common for most verbs in British English than in Indian, relative to the alternative “NP1-V-NP2-to/for/at-NP3” (he provided money to them), illustrating the systematic nature of structural nativisation.